


A New friend

by TheMuchTooMerryMaiden



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Schmoop, sherlocksecretsanta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden/pseuds/TheMuchTooMerryMaiden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock's back, John's moved on and one way or another Sherlock's never been happier...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New friend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [asDirectedByBecky](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=asDirectedByBecky).



“You never believed in Father Christmas?”

John was treated to one of Sherlock’s most withering ‘Why am I surrounded by idiots’ looks,

“Of course not!”

John rubbed at his eyes for a moment,

“I suppose you deduced it was your parents?”

“No, ‘Father Christmas’,” John could hear the quotes, “wasn’t one of the deceptions they practiced on us.”

There was a world to explore in that statement John thought but it probably needed exploring at some other time, for now he needed to stick to the main point at issue,

“Well, Mary and I are clear, we want David to believe in Father Christmas,” he took in Sherlock’s expression and steeled himself not to make excuses and explanations, “so, don’t give it away. Please.”

“Very well,” he replied with a long-suffering air, “I will join in with your wilful deception of his young mind. Maybe this is the reason other people never learn to properly observe, they do when they’re younger and then people tell them untrue things and they learn not to believe their own senses…”

John knew when to interrupt Sherlock,

“That is enough, we are not hindering David’s development, don’t even think about saying that to Mary. Anyway, even if we were he spends enough time with you to counteract the effect.”

And it was true, it had been a mutual admiration society since Sherlock and David had first clapped eyes on each other. Not that Sherlock would have admitted it, no David was just an interesting field of study and of course he would look after the boy while his parents went out, it would give him another opportunity to make observations. No one was fooled. David felt the same, his first, proper, undisputable smile had been directed at Sherlock and John and Mary had both tried not to feel aggrieved at that. It had been harder still to not get aggrieved when both Mycroft and Greg had expressed the opinion that they were off their heads for leaving the son and heir with Sherlock. John had known it would be fine and it genuinely didn’t seem to have occurred to Mary that there might be a problem, but then she’d only known the Sherlock that came back from the dead. 

Last Christmas had been David’s first real Christmas, but at two and just a few days over, he hadn’t actually taken a lot of notice, John had to admit. This year was different, this year he was as excited as it was possible to be and asking a million questions and a lot of them were about Father Christmas. John and Mary were old fashioned enough that they wanted him to keep that sense of wonder for a while yet, hence the conversation with Sherlock.

“Also, I think it’s the only way we’re going to get him to go to bed on Christmas Eve,”

The expression of outrage about this deception on Sherlock’s face kept John laughing on and off for the next couple of days.

 

“You know where everything is?”

“Obviously! Away you go and do your ‘errands’, David and I will be perfectly all right for the space of a couple of hours.”

Mary smiled at him, in a way that he had been at first horrifying and later strangely comforting to Sherlock. They’d got on well from the start, well once he’d got used to the idea and after she’d given him the ‘If you ever do that to him again you had better be dead because otherwise I’ll kill you,” speech.

“Right, then, we’ll be back in a couple of hours, see you David.”

David who was intent on getting Sherlock to look at a picture in a medical textbook of John’s managed a perfunctory wave at his mother as she left.

Sherlock spend about fifteen minutes answering questions about the pictures in the textbook with only slight digressions into the stories of cases, suitably edited, obviously.

“What are we going to do now?” David asked, looking up at Sherlock like he was the most interesting thing in the world. That never got old for Sherlock. It was both like and unlike the look John had on his face during their first case, but where from John it had been the look of someone reaching for something to give meaning back to his life, from David it was utter trust that what he found for them to do would be fascinating; luckily he had something good in mind.

 

Any other parents, any other baby sitter, any other kid and the only response, John thought, would have been to scream. But actually it only looked horribly unsafe; a moment of observation showed the amount of care that Sherlock was taking. There were two different fire extinguishers, sand and water buckets and David was wearing safety goggles that pretty much covered his entire face. Sherlock had given him some sort of gauntlets that John was sure were heat-proof and fire-proof, added to the lab coat the boy was about as fully protected as possible while he set fire to things.

“You two been having fun?” John asked.

They both turned round with almost matching grins and David launched himself at John and began to explain exactly what they had been doing and how different paper looked different even after it had been burned and how you could still see the words and letters sometimes and how very, very important it was that he only did experiments when Sherlock or mummy or daddy were there to help. John shot Sherlock a quick expression of thanks at this last bit, but truth to tell David seemed very clear on the fact that experiments were something he did with Sherlock not on his own.

Sherlock got up to go while David was still telling John everything but Mary intercepted him,

“You know he won’t do experiments without you because he doesn’t want to leave you out?”

Sherlock would have replied but he found his throat strangely tight.

 

“So if he brings the presents in a sleigh which is like a big sledge, what happens if it doesn’t snow?”

Sherlock wasn’t completely sure he wasn’t going to rupture something from fighting the urge to roll his eyes, but he’d promised John,

“Well, it’ magic,” Sherlock replied,

“What magic so it doesn’t need snow? Why isn’t it just a car then?”

Sherlock trawled through his visual memory of Christmas cards and decorations,

“Because it can fly,” Sherlock was proud of himself that he managed to not make that a question,

“Why does it fly?”

Sherlock floundered for a moment before he pulled together an answer,

“Because it’s quicker, he has an awful lot of houses to get round and not much time, and things can move faster in air than they can on the ground.”

“Really? Why?”

“It’s to do with air resistance,” Sherlock replied, knowing what was going to happen next,

“Really? Cars and trains can go really fast, but things that fly go even faster?”

“We can look it up if you want,” Sherlock answered and then the two of them spent the next two hours first looking up speeds of things, and then dropping identical ball bearings into different liquids so that they could time how long it took for them to drop to the bottom, (although they both got bored before the ball bearing got to the bottom of the test tube of syrup). 

“OK,” David continued afterwards, “but it’s still going through air when it’s on the ground, isn’t it?”

There’s such a thing as too logical, Sherlock thought, before he sent David off for some of his model cars and they pitched into another experiment involving them throwing a car through the air and pushing it as hard as they could across first the laminate flooring and then a rug until David was satisfied that the car did go faster through the air.

Later that night when John and Mary had told David a story and Sherlock had been summoned because David wanted to say goodnight, he continued with his questions,

“Would Father Christmas go on the snow if there was snow?”

Sherlock thought for a moment before he replied,

“He might, but I think it would still be quicker to fly, snow is slippery but it’s not as slippery as going just through the air, plus if you’ve got flying reindeer then why wouldn’t you fly? He’s got to have a good view, don’t you think?”

“Do you think the reindeer like flying?” David asked, trying to keep his eyes open and only just making it.

“Yes, I’m sure they do.” Sherlock paused before he continued in a quieter voice, “the feel of the wind in their antlers, the stars sparkling, being together and knowing they’re doing a good job.”

He stopped, David was asleep, Sherlock envied him his ability to sleep like that and hoped he would never spend hours staring at the ceiling like he had done as a boy.

 

It had been a good and a bad few weeks. Sherlock had been surprised to find that he just felt happy that Mary was pregnant again and John and Mary were clearly over the moon. The problem was that David was going through what John and Mary referred to as ‘a phase’. Apparently a phase was some sort of parental code for being a complete and total horror. Currently Sherlock was the only person who had any chance of David not being difficult and then only sometimes, he was even being awful for Mrs Hudson.

At the end of a particularly awful day John resorted to texting Sherlock:

Is there any chance you could come and stay with David for an hour or so? I won’t lie to you he’s being a pain, so I’d understand if you can’t, but you may save his life if you do :)

Sherlock replied promptly:

I’ll be there in15 minutes.

Sherlock could hear the shouting if not the words from down the street and when Mary opened the door she looked more rattled than he’d ever seen her,

“God, I’m glad you’re here, but really you should probably escape while you still can!”

Sherlock was about to answer when a shout from John interrupted,

“For pity’s sake, don’t put him off.”

Mary stood out of the way and walked in. It became obvious that David must be in his room.

“What’s happened?” Sherlock asked,

“He’s just been impossible this morning,” John replied finishing up with hitting Mary over the head with a book and then laughing. Do you mind staying here with him? We had to go out anyway, Mary’s got an appointment, normally we’d take him with us but,”

Sherlock interrupted,

“Of course. Go, no need to rush back, I’ll be fine.”

“Thank you so much.”

The shouting and banging from David’s room did not lessen in the slightest as John and Mary put coats on and left and Sherlock sat and listened for a few minutes before deciding he’d had enough. Then he sat for a moment before going to the door of David’s room and knocking,

“May I come in?” he asked after the knock, not sure David would even hear,

“No!” The response was instantaneous.

“Then I’ll just wait here until you say it’s OK for me to come in.”

The thumping and banging continued and Sherlock wondered if David would own any unbroken thing by the end of this tantrum. On and off he asked if he could come in yet only to be told ‘No!’ After a while though there was a single thump at the door and by the shadow Sherlock deduced that David was sat on the floor leaning on the door having finally tired himself out at least a little bit.

“You sound really fed up,” Sherlock tried, “Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No!”

“That’s OK,” Sherlock replied, “but can I tell you about one time when I was fed up?”

 

David finally opened the door at this,

“Do grown-ups get fed up?”

“Of course we do, how do you think we can spot when you’re fed up?”

“S’pose.”

David slumped down and sat next to Sherlock, tucking himself against his side. Still wondering at how this was a thing he now did, Sherlock put his arm round the boy and began to speak.

“You know how your father is my best friend? Like you and Nick at nursery?”

David still wasn’t quite ready to give in yet but he managed a nod.

“Well, before I met John I really didn’t have any friends,”

“What about Uncle Greg?” David asked,

“Yes, Uncle Greg is my friend but I didn’t know it really, I was a bit thick about it all,” Sherlock paused to see if David had any more questions but he didn’t seem to have, “So I had a friend for the first time but then I had to go away.” 

Sherlock swallowed, he really didn’t like to think about the time he’d spent away more than he had to. John, Mary and Greg knew the highlights but only Mycroft knew the full story, the depths he’d had to sink to and Sherlock was determined that it should stay that way.

“Where did you go?” David asked,

“Oh, all sorts of places, the desert and the mountains and all the places in between,” Sherlock replied, inwardly cringing and vowing to read fewer bedtime stories. Again he paused but the answer seemed to satisfy David, “When I got back I expected that nothing would have changed, but lots of things had changed, for a start off, your dad had met your mum.”

“At the hospital?” David asked. The desire to rehearse a story that he already knew had always surprised Sherlock, but he’d long ago learned to find it almost sweet,

“That’s right, at the hospital. By the time I got back they were planning to get married and I thought that your dad wouldn’t want to be my friend anymore because he had a new friend. But it wasn’t like that, it wasn’t like that at all. Instead I got a new friend as well as my old friend.”

“Was that my mummy?”

“Yes it was, and then it got even better, because I got another new friend, can you guess who that was?”

“Me?”

“That’s right. And now we’re all going to get another new friend”

David tucked himself tighter in to Sherlock’s side,

“The new baby?”

“Yes, are you worried about that?”

“A bit,” David admitted in a very quiet voice and Sherlock hugged him closer.

“You don’t need to be, your mum and dad will love you just as much as they do now and you’ll have someone else to love and who will love you.”

“Do you love Uncle Mycroft?”

Sherlock cleared his throat,

“Promise not to tell?”

David looked up and already Sherlock could tell that he was feeling better,

“Yes, but don’t tell him!”


End file.
